Our Future in Progress:
Comprehensive Watershed Management Plan for Lake Maumelle

Lake Maumelle and Lake Winona provide a high-quality and abundant supply of drinking water at a reasonable cost for approximately 398,000 of us in the Little Rock-North Little Rock metropolitan area.

The two lakes are public investments that have a vital and indispensable role in our quality of life and public health.

As the local water supplier, Central Arkansas Water (CAW) governs and manages the two lakes and maintains as a top priority ensuring safe, adequate, and reliable drinking water for customers now and in the future.

The quality of the raw-water sources determines (1) the amount of treatment required to meet federal and State of Arkansas standards for safety and health, (2) the cost we, as consumers, pay for water service, and (3) the quality of drinking water that ultimately flows from our tap. Thus protecting and maintaining the quality of raw-water sources have become a focus for us locally and for public drinking water suppliers around the state and across the United States.

Our water utility for more than a decade has been strengthening our program of measures to protect Lake Maumelle and Lake Winona from pollution and other sources of possible contamination that could affect the quality of our drinking water. A critical factor is to monitor and control runoff that feeds the lakes and ultimately — after treatment — becomes our drinking water.

The surrounding Ouachita National Forest and a joint-use (watershed lands management) agreement with the U.S. Forest Service provide priceless protection for Lake Winona. Lake Maumelle, located closer to populated areas, on the other hand is vulnerable to the stresses of urbanization, the disturbance of land around the lake, and certain land-uses.

The most significant threat to drinking water supply lakes, such as Lake Maumelle — our primary water source — is increased pollution loading from urbanization, construction, and other land disturbances around the lake.

Lake Maumelle’s watershed encompasses approximately 88,000 acres of mostly forestland that straddles parts of Pulaski, Perry, and Saline counties. There are pockets of homes, farmland, forestry activities, and timber harvesting within the lake’s watershed. Stormwater and other runoff from the surrounding lands drain into the lake and replenish it during the four seasons of the year. When precipitation from rain, irrigation, and snowmelt flows over the ground, it picks up whatever is in its path and carries the pollution load or runoff into the lake.

In response to the imperative to take a comprehensive approach to protecting Lake Maumelle, the Board of Commissioners, Central Arkansas Water, adopted a comprehensive Lake Maumelle Watershed Management Plan. The Board adopted the plan February 23, 2007.

Two years in the making and the first such formal initiative in the State of Arkansas, the plan’s provisions are to maintain Lake Maumelle as a high-quality drinking water supply, protect the lake from increased pollution that results from urbanization and other land disturbances, provide for the equitable sharing of costs and benefits associated with this protection, and minimize land-use restrictions on owners of property surrounding the water source.

The plan is in the initial phase of implementation and specifically directs that the water utility undertake strategies related to lake management, private land development, forestry activities, other land disturbances, property owner practices, and land acquisition to ensure the long-term viability of the lake, as a drinking water supply, and to minimize land-use restrictions on owners of private property in the surrounding watershed.

Institution of the plan will involve close collaboration with owners of private property around the lake and with governmental jurisdictions that have planning or other authority over the lake or surrounding watershed lands.

Tetra Tech, Inc., of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, the consulting firm that developed the science-based plan, will be supporting CAW, governmental jurisdictions, regulatory agencies, and property owners in the implementation of the plan.

CAW’s watershed management programs for Lake Maumelle and Lake Winona place the utility in the vanguard of national efforts to protect public surface drinking water supplies. The programs also key components of assuring the effective and long-term protection of our metropolitan community’s drinking water and the affordable cost that we pay for it.

You may view the Draft Lake Maumelle Watershed Management Plan on this web site at:

http://www.carkw.com/documents/protection_plan.pdf

CAW will keep you updated on the plan status, as well other opportunities for public participation.